1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a cell culture method, particularly to a co-culture method for human mesenchymal stem cells and target animal cells.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Type I diabetes (also called insulin relied type diabetes) is mainly caused by the abnormality of pancreatic islet cell which is responsible for secreting the insulin. Though it only accounts for 5-10% of all cases of diabetes, the patients become dependent on daily injection of insulin in order to control the illness condition for life, which will influence the life of patients seriously. So, there are a lot of researches on type I diabetes.
It is generally acknowledged that islet-like cell clusters (ICCs) can generate insulin. Transplantation of islet-like cell clusters is the best method to cure type I diabetes at present. But because the supply of ICCs transplantation is insufficient, the ICCs are lost during separation and purification process, it is difficult to get enough mass purified ICCs, which is often one of the reasons to fail for the fail of ICCs transplantation. In addition, ex vivo culture of ICCs is very difficult, and the common culture method cannot exceed 3 to 5 days. Even the worldwide famous Edmonton method (the operation of transplanting ICCs donated by the dead person to diabetes patient) shall transplant ICCs to the diabetes patient within 2 hours. Because in the present common ex vivo culture method, ICCs will be denatured, dead, and unable to be utilized
Therefore, due to the difficulty for culturing ICCs, the present invention proposes a cell culture method and application thereof. The invention is described briefly as follows.